Comments on: Tory “green housing” plans lack ambition

By: Cameron’s “green housing” plan unpicked | Left Foot Forward

Cameron’s “green housing” plan unpicked | Left Foot Forward — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:36:29 +0000

[...] David Cameron’s comments on green homes in Wednesday’s Guardian are becoming clearer. Previous announcements have alluded to what the Conservative plans would involve and the slow drip of information [...]

By: muscle relaxer

muscle relaxer — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:51:28 +0000

You need think about it. Despite the emails, the overwhelming evidence showing global warming is happening hasn’t changed.
“The e-mails do nothing to undermine the very strong scientific consensus . . . that tells us the Earth is warming, that warming is largely a result of human activity,” Jane Lubchenco, who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told a House committee. She said that the e-mails don’t cover data from NOAA and NASA, whose independent climate records show dramatic warming.

By: Roger

Roger — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:18:44 +0000

I’ve now attended several of Shapp’s speeches and every time I am reminded of the Seinfeld line about how just when I think I’ve finally worked out how shallow he is, he goes and drains the lake a little bit more..

Good article – but we need a proper comparison between PAYS and the Green Deal.

They are both conceptually similar in that they attempt to incentivise retrofit work by offering a loan which attaches itself to the property itself through some sort of charge.

The Tory Green Deal however at least in Shapps’s presentation seems based on the fantasy that all this can be achieved with little or no state involvement, with the likes of Tesco and M&S offering the loans and the energy companies kindly administering the payback through adding a charge to your bill.

Problem is that if you work through their examples the 25-year loans bear an implied interest rate of only 4% p.a. and given how small most will be it is difficult to see why any private sector company would trouble itself to offer them (Tesco currently make an IRR of 6% by selling baked beans and I doubt they’d make 1% profit on these loans after operation and marketing costs are deducted).

As for the energy companies I can’t see what their incentive to co-operate is at all.

In fact the Tory loan scheme only makes any sort of financial sense if you bear in mind that they also want to reward us for recycling with M&S and Tesco vouchers (the more you recycle the more you can buy!) – but this trade-off between loans and vouchers seems a very shaky foundation for a policy that needs to be in place for decades rather than years.

In contrast the PAYS scheme is being properly piloted, should offer a more realistic maximum level of loan and relies on council charges rather than the goodwill of energy companies and High St retailers to administer payback.